'With my body I worship you.' Part One. The dangers of undervaluing relationships, dating, sex and marriage.
- David Martin
- | Feb 19, 2010
- | Series: With my body I worship you
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In this two part article I’m not presenting a full argument for the Biblical understanding of relationships, dating, marriage and sex. Instead I’m mapping out the territory in which we all live. Hopefully increased awareness of this territory should help us to see more readily where the Biblical teaching on realtionships, dating, marriage and sex challenges, confronts and even in some cases confirms what our society holds to be most precious when it talks about human sexual relationships.
Basically when it comes to relationships, dating, marriage and sex we all are in danger of falling into two ways of thinking. Firstly we might be in danger of undervaluing these things. But the opposite is an equally grave danger too, as we might secondly overvalue them just as much.
Lets begin in this part with the problem of undervaluing. I recently read of a man who was extolling the virtues of visiting a prostitute. Now you might ask, what good can possibly come from visiting a prostitute? In most societies prostition is illegal, but this man wanted to make a virtue of it. He argued, ‘After all, why do most men take women out for a meal and a movie?’ To his mind it was just a longwinded, hypocritical way of paying for sex. And he went on to say, ‘At least with my way you don’t have to pay for a meal you don’t want to eat, or a movie you don’t want to see’. And no doubt for some people this will make some sense. If we are honest, and not altogether naive, much of what passes for romance in our culture is actually a longwinded way of paying for sex, because relationships, dating and sex are grossly undervalued by many in our society. They have been turned into a physical act, a bodily function, an appetite that must be satisfied. And so in turn, the people with whom we have relationships with, who themselves are the sons and daughters of loving parents, and whose smiles and tears matter, can quickly become nothing more than commodities which exists to satisfy the cravings of our libidos.
Most sensible people, I think, would agree that something is seriously wrong with a person or society that could see anything virtuous in prostitution. However all that this man is doing is simply undervaluing relationships, dating, marriage and sex. And this a particular problem that males espeically have to deal with. We may not like to put it as bluntly as this man did, but if we undervalue relationships and treat women as things that are there to simply satisfy our appetites, can we really argue with his logic?
To make matters worse, this by and large is an inescapable problem. Current statistics show that between the ages of 8 and 18 we will have seen roughly 90 000 sexual images. 52% of all P.G. movies contain high sexual content. 10 years ago in Ireland 13million euros was spent on prostitution and 1/3 of all profits of the UK edition of Playboy are made in Ireland. For the longest time, especially in Ireland, dating, relationships and certainly sex were seen as bad and dirty things. Things that should not be talked about in public, little less seen. But then something happened in the 1960s that liberated everyone and people suddenly thought that freedom was expressed in having as many sexual relationships with as many people as possible. Now I’m not suggesting that we still embrace such practices today. With a little historical distance even the most liberated amongst us can see the pitfalls in such promiscuity. However we are still living with something of a legacy steming from the 60’s, and it is not limited to the generation that grew up then either. Many of our teenageers today still bear the burden of the sexual revolution. For example in 2004 over 1000 teenagers in Ireland were diagnosed with STDs. Ireland still has the highest rate of teemage pregnacy in Europe.
Indeed the recent Murphy and Ryan reports concerning sexual abuse show us that behind a cloak of silence many of the most respectable and powerful people in society had grossly undervalued sex, taking it to the most extreme end.
The surprising thing is that even still today the vast majority of people believe that the Bible thinks that relationships, dating and sex are bad and dirty too. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The Bible has lots to say about these things. In fact an entire book of the Bible, The Song of Songs, is dedicated to celebrating the joy and power of sexual relationships. In otherwords the Bible doesn’t want us undervaluing relationships, dating, marriage or sex. It says things like
‘Eat, O friends, and drink. Drink your fill O lovers’ Song of Songs 5:1
And the writer is not talking about food at this point. In Genesis Chapters 1 and 2 we’re told that God created man and the only bad thing in all of paradise is that man was alone. Relatioinships matter to God. So God gave Eve to Adam and they became husband and wife. And then God actually commanded them to go and have sex together, as husband and wife.
‘Be fruitful and increase in number.’ Gen. 1:28
‘a man will leave his father and mother
and be united with his wife and they will become one flesh.’ Gen 2:24
Now there is a lot more to say about the idea of ‘one flesh’ than simply the physical act of sex, but it certainly does not mean anything less than that. So God is not anti-relationships nor is he anti-sex. He created these things. They are not bad or dirty and since he made them he certainly doesn’t want us undervaluing them. Sex especially is about oneness. In God’s world 1+1=1. One man, plus one woman equals oneness. Sex joins people together. It is more than a physical act. In some profound, irreversible way two people become one. That is why prostitution, in fact any sex outside marriage, to some degree even pornography is wrong and cause such great harm to people. There was a professor in university who made this point in a very practical way. He took a six inch strip of cellotape, and he picked the hairiest student in the room, asking him to roll up his sleeve. ‘Now,’ the professor said, ‘Tell the tape not to stick.’ The student obliged: ‘Don’t stick, tape!’ The professor pressed the tape down on his forearm and said, ‘Let’s see whether the tape obeys.’ With a single rip, he tore the tape off the students arm. The student yelped. ‘Let’s try that again,’ said the professor, as he pressed the tape down in the same place, and pulled it off again. ‘Any better?’ ‘A little bit,’ said the student warily. ‘How many times are you going to do that, professor?’ ‘As many times as it takes for the tape to obey.’ The professor repeated the process five times and each time, of course, the tape was less sticky than the time before. After the fifth time, the professor said to the student, ‘Now tell the tape to stick.’ He did. But no matter how hard the professor pressed that tape on the student’s arm,it simply fell off again. It just would not stick.
The point being of course that our sexual activity does something very similar. The first time we use it, it sticks ot whoever it touches. And however hard we tell it not to stick, sex can’t help sticking. That is what it is for. So when we try to tear ourselves loose, it harms us. Not only that, but when we do get loose, sex is not as ‘sticky’ as it was before. And after a while, if it is pulled away from person after person, it just stops sticking. Sexual partners become more and more like strangers, and we start to feel less and less for people we’re having sex with. The longing for intimacy drives us on, but our capacity to satisfy that longing has been spoiled. You may be tempted to think, ‘I’ll enjoy sex now, and settle down later with someone.’ But if we use sex in that way, our very deepest desires for closeness and commitment may well remain unfufilled.
And it is at this point where men especially can play there part. Men, don’t undervalue your relationships, dating, marriage and sex. They are not a means to an end and girls are not there simply to satisfy your appetites. In Ephesians 5 Paul gives some hard hitting advice to husbands. He says, ‘Men love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her'.
For further reading:
Song of Songs
Christopher Ash, Married for God. Making your marriage the best it can be.
Vaughn Roberts, God’s Big Design: Life as he intends it to be
Nigel Pollock, The Relationships Revolution
Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen, Pure Sex
Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man
